In Austin, Texas, where Google Fiber is on its way, AT&T has claimed it will also provide gigabit Internet just as long as the city gives it the same exact deal as it gave Google.

I doubt Austin would do this, to be honest. Once they have one fiber provider in place, the utility to the city of having another drops off sharply, so why subsidize another?

If AT&T and the other incumbents were smart, they'd try to strike a deal with other municipalities to deploy gigabit, to provide a hedge against Google showing up and eating their lunch. It probably won't happen though.

I think it's totally legitimate to mention them. People have aheard a whole bunch about Google's fibre initiatives, so comparing and constrasting a regional ISP's plans with what Google has announced is useful shorthand.

Ah, got really excited, but I live in a house. Not worth trading living in a house to get rid of Shaw's expensive 50Mbps internet. Still a nice deal for my friends in apartments, etc.

The duopoly we have here is pretty disappointing. Shaw and Telus somehow have the exact same prices for high speed. Each has been raising their price by $5.00 a month, every 6 months. They do this at the exact same time, so you can't switch! Quite a coincidence, eh?

In Austin, Texas, where Google Fiber is on its way, AT&T has claimed it will also provide gigabit Internet just as long as the city gives it the same exact deal as it gave Google.

I doubt Austin would do this, to be honest. Once they have one fiber provider in place, the utility to the city of having another drops off sharply, so why subsidize another?

If AT&T and the other incumbents were smart, they'd try to strike a deal with other municipalities to deploy gigabit, to provide a hedge against Google showing up and eating their lunch. It probably won't happen though.

The pace of these little companies popping up with Gigabit service keeps increasing though. I expect at some point they will get scared and get to work.

I know personally, I would switch to a different company even if my local cable company offered the same speed at the same price. Just because my local cable company is a PITA and anticompetitive to boot. I'm sure not everyone feels that way, but how many people would say they actually like their cable company and feel loyalty to it?

Just so you don't feel alone, it's no better on the other side of the Hudson. Cablevision has been OK service-wise, and FiOS is available if need be. Still, I can't see a major US city (Sorry Austin & KC) as a testing ground for any gigabit service anytime soon.

In Austin, Texas, where Google Fiber is on its way, AT&T has claimed it will also provide gigabit Internet just as long as the city gives it the same exact deal as it gave Google.

I doubt Austin would do this, to be honest. Once they have one fiber provider in place, the utility to the city of having another drops off sharply, so why subsidize another?

If AT&T and the other incumbents were smart, they'd try to strike a deal with other municipalities to deploy gigabit, to provide a hedge against Google showing up and eating their lunch. It probably won't happen though.

1) It may be illegal for the City to give a "sweetheart deal" to one company but not others. Sole-sourced contracts are typically considered to be corrupt.

2) It is good for the city to have competition. Without competition there is no incentive for companies to treat customers well.

In Austin, Texas, where Google Fiber is on its way, AT&T has claimed it will also provide gigabit Internet just as long as the city gives it the same exact deal as it gave Google.

I doubt Austin would do this, to be honest. Once they have one fiber provider in place, the utility to the city of having another drops off sharply, so why subsidize another?

If AT&T and the other incumbents were smart, they'd try to strike a deal with other municipalities to deploy gigabit, to provide a hedge against Google showing up and eating their lunch. It probably won't happen though.

Wow, if I didn't actually own my home, I'd move! I'm stucjk with $70 5Mb downstream access from both Comcast and CenturyLink. I have CenturyLink since they don't employ any data limits like Comcast's 250GB monthly cap (it's rare that I hit that 250GB cap - but months where I do tons of HD streaming, I can hit the 400GB+ mark with all Internet enabled devices).

As an apartment-dweller, I like the sound of this. Roll the internet bill into the rent, and bill yourself as having free gigabit internet with the price of rent. The ISP gets a large, consistent costumer, and the end user gets great internet and consolidated bills.

Multiple ISPs running fibre into homes is stupid. Even having multiple ISPs running fibre into individual neighbourhoods is stupid. Talk about wasteful redundancies!

Cities, provinces, counties, states, etc (governments at all levels) really need to get their acts together, and make IP networking a utilty. Then, one single fibre drop (with multiple fibres if needed) can be run into the home, right beside the single plumbing drop, single electric drop, single gas drop, etc. Funnel it all back into a city-wide exchange, and have the individual ISPs, media corps, etc connect to the exchange and "wire" up individual users at that point.

IOW, we need to make fibre the new copper, add a new utility corp to the mix, and bring back the "many ISPs using 1 line" days of dial-up/DSL.

To do otherwise is just going to waste time, money, energy, etc as individual ISPs each string their own fibres on top of each other. You don't see 17 separate gas lines coming into a home, even though homeowners have the option of buying their gas from 17 separate companies ... so why do we need 17 separate "Internet" lines into a home?

Edit: Unfortunately, I can see a future where individual ISPs will have carved cities up into "fibrehoods" where changing providers means moving across town.

You don't see 17 separate gas lines coming into a home, even though homeowners have the option of buying their gas from 17 separate companies ... so why do we need 17 separate "Internet" lines into a home?

Multiple ISPs running fibre into homes is stupid. Even having multiple ISPs running fibre into individual neighbourhoods is stupid. Talk about wasteful redundancies!

Cities, provinces, counties, states, etc (governments at all levels) really need to get their acts together, and make IP networking a utilty. Then, one single fibre drop (with multiple fibres if needed) can be run into the home, right beside the single plumbing drop, single electric drop, single gas drop, etc. Funnel it all back into a city-wide exchange, and have the individual ISPs, media corps, etc connect to the exchange and "wire" up individual users at that point.

IOW, we need to make fibre the new copper, add a new utility corp to the mix, and bring back the "many ISPs using 1 line" days of dial-up/DSL.

To do otherwise is just going to waste time, money, energy, etc as individual ISPs each string their own fibres on top of each other. You don't see 17 separate gas lines coming into a home, even though homeowners have the option of buying their gas from 17 separate companies ... so why do we need 17 separate "Internet" lines into a home?

Multiple ISPs running fibre into homes is stupid. Even having multiple ISPs running fibre into individual neighbourhoods is stupid. Talk about wasteful redundancies!

Is that how it would work, though? I envisage them all doing fibre-to-the-cabinet and only extending it to fibre-to-the-home on demand. There may be "fibrehoods" arising due to some companies not considering an area profitable but no reason why there shouldn't be areas where they compete for individual customers.

Of course, someone moving into a home supplied by fibre company A who wants a deal with fibre company B would then have two cables but it wouldn't be the norm until way down the line and many people have changed residence and also changed supplier.

Actually I find that article kind of interesting. Analysts saying google cant keep this up because of substantial costs to rolling fiber out... but their estimates are basically about $560 / house... at $70 to $120/month, Google can make that back in no time. Granted there are expenses for maintaining/providing support and the service, so it will take longer than 5 to 8 months, but they will probably make back all they spent within 2 years. Not to mention Google has tons of money anyways and can use their services for more advertising and consumer expansion of their services. If left to their own devices, at such costs, they probably could wire up whole states.

In Austin, Texas, where Google Fiber is on its way, AT&T has claimed it will also provide gigabit Internet just as long as the city gives it the same exact deal as it gave Google.

I doubt Austin would do this, to be honest. Once they have one fiber provider in place, the utility to the city of having another drops off sharply, so why subsidize another?

If AT&T and the other incumbents were smart, they'd try to strike a deal with other municipalities to deploy gigabit, to provide a hedge against Google showing up and eating their lunch. It probably won't happen though.

1) It may be illegal for the City to give a "sweetheart deal" to one company but not others. Sole-sourced contracts are typically considered to be corrupt.

2) It is good for the city to have competition. Without competition there is no incentive for companies to treat customers well.

I assume the reason they let Google Fiber get the "deal" in the first place is because Google will allow 3rd-party ISPs to use their fiber at cost.

Ah, got really excited, but I live in a house. Not worth trading living in a house to get rid of Shaw's expensive 50Mbps internet. Still a nice deal for my friends in apartments, etc.

The duopoly we have here is pretty disappointing. Shaw and Telus somehow have the exact same prices for high speed. Each has been raising their price by $5.00 a month, every 6 months. They do this at the exact same time, so you can't switch! Quite a coincidence, eh?

You just threaten to switch, and talk to their retentions department. I've been with Telus for the past 5 years, and my 15Mb DSL is less than ~25/month.

"Due to recent advances in FTTH [fiber to the home]-type fiber optic cable technology, bend loss insensitive fiber can be connected to each suite using the same installation methods as copper telephone cables or other common, low-voltage wiring installation methods," the company says. Building upgrades would support up to 10Gbps speeds to prevent installations from becoming obsolete a few decades down the road. OneGigabit also hopes to partner with real estate developers to get capacity in new buildings from the start, since that's cheaper than retrofitting.

Greenfield (aka "new buildings") is really the only way to deploy economically in MDU locations if you want to deliver >100M speeds to each unit - unless the property had the foresight to install some quality Cat5e in a sane topology. Otherwise you're looking at the usual nightmare of decades-old, poorly-maintained copper wiring that's gonna be lucky to support 20-50M DSL or the migraine-inducing pain of re-wiring an existing building. Only occasionally does one come across a building with ducts or other considerations that make retrofits feasible.

If they're talking 10Gbps to each unit, that makes me wonder if they're deploying optical terminals to each unit or have a line on some tech better than XG-PON. Of course, with MDU-exclusive locations, perhaps they're going with some tech other than PON and using active fiber topologies.

Where I live (The Netherlands) the costs of FttH is the reason that most cities (90% of the ones with glass fiber) have only a single firm that owns the cable and the surrounding infrastructure, they make a profit on it but there is a ceiling on the price they can ask. Any provider can connect to this provided they are willing to pay. Still isn't gigabit but the most expensive triple play packages (around 80 to 90 euro) go up to 500 Mb/s and usually contain extras to justify the price hike from lower speed connections.

I know personally, I would switch to a different company even if my local cable company offered the same speed at the same price. Just because my local cable company is a PITA and anticompetitive to boot. I'm sure not everyone feels that way, but how many people would say they actually like their cable company and feel loyalty to it?

I would love to have a choice of ISP's - maybe at least one would come up to advertised speeds beyond a 2 second "boost" avialable only after signing on. This would be a very interesting poll for ARS to run because I doubt most people are happy with their service and can't change due to no competition.

I see advertising daily about great service awards from some obscure ratings thing that no one has ever heard of. The only ones they are fooling are politicans that don't know how to use the internet.

Actually I find that article kind of interesting. Analysts saying google cant keep this up because of substantial costs to rolling fiber out... but their estimates are basically about $560 / house... at $70 to $120/month, Google can make that back in no time. Granted there are expenses for maintaining/providing support and the service, so it will take longer than 5 to 8 months, but they will probably make back all they spent within 2 years. Not to mention Google has tons of money anyways and can use their services for more advertising and consumer expansion of their services. If left to their own devices, at such costs, they probably could wire up whole states.

Google will also make up the difference because so few people are happy with the service from existing cable. It'll be interesting to see what happens because few cable companies know how to compete at all. Their business model rely's on legislation to keep competition down and that's what they will resort to again. It's all they know.

Now if Shaw would only be one of the first Canadian cable companies to get rid of the requirement that you buy THEIR cable boxes to use on THEIR networks.

Yes, it's practically all digital, but no cable company in Canada allows use of boxes they didn't sell (so no used sales outside of region they serve), nor do they allow you to use a third party box (no TiVo or anything else).

Of course, cable companies also own content creators (while Comcast was struggling to buy NBC, we allowed it full tilt).

If you wanted to see what various FCC rules did, look north. We suffer with sub-par DVRs and cable boxes (I'd love to get TiVo working again - at least it reliably records and does everything right). Hell, even Windows Media Center works better. But of course, you only get one tuner because we can't use CableCARD or other mechanism to get 6 tuner units - you have to use an HD capture card from their HD boxes over IR.

As an apartment-dweller, I like the sound of this. Roll the internet bill into the rent, and bill yourself as having free gigabit internet with the price of rent. The ISP gets a large, consistent costumer, and the end user gets great internet and consolidated bills.

10% of your customers complain that they need a static IP for work, which you don't provide... Folks complain to building management about their internet issues all the damn time, rather than the ISP, since that's who they're paying. Technical issues, such as some router or other device not working quite right with the service become a breach of contract, allowing tenants to get out of their lease agreement whenever they want. etc.

As an apartment-dweller, I like the sound of this. Roll the internet bill into the rent, and bill yourself as having free gigabit internet with the price of rent. The ISP gets a large, consistent costumer, and the end user gets great internet and consolidated bills.

10% of your customers complain that they need a static IP for work, which you don't provide... Folks complain to building management about their internet issues all the damn time, rather than the ISP, since that's who they're paying. Technical issues, such as some router or other device not working quite right with the service become a breach of contract, allowing tenants to get out of their lease agreement whenever they want. etc.

It's not a bad idea in theory... But it could get very, very messy.

I'm not quite sure how it is all hashed out and appropriate asses covered, but it has been common for bills, internet and cable/satellite TV to be included in the rent in apartment buildings here in the UK. I've never heard of any disputes or the like, but it has got me curious about how the things you mention would be dealt with.

I know personally, I would switch to a different company even if my local cable company offered the same speed at the same price. Just because my local cable company is a PITA and anticompetitive to boot. I'm sure not everyone feels that way, but how many people would say they actually like their cable company and feel loyalty to it?

Two ISPs in an area don't feel a need to compete. There will be a certain number of people who change from one to the other every month, and even a superb service won't make a big enough dent in those numbers to make it very profitable.

I'm happy with cable companies in general, because they're the better option against phone companies. I'll take a terrible cable company over the incompetent idiots at Verizon any day...

I'm quite happy with Charter. 25/3Mbps internet service for $30/mo. And after a couple months, they turned-on TV service, no charge. Outages are very rare, and late at night. And they didn't have to charge a reasonable price, either... Their only competition in the area is Verizon FIOS, which starts at $55/mo for even lower speeds (and requires a box on premises drawing 100W of power all the time).

I'd stay away from Cox, if possible... Always raising rates for the same service. Sign-up is a huge hassle if you refuse to give them your SS#. Tech support are idiots. Outages were fairly frequent. etc.